I don't seem to find anything in the way of a manual/user guide. Is there one? If not, why?

Thanks

Sometimes as a small company we err on the side of getting new features/performance out in our products, and the manuals sometimes lag. That said, we'll have an update release in the next day or so that also has ... drum roll please ... a new manual for NEO.

David, can you enlighten me as to just what Neo (and I assume all Cineform products) are doing that makes editing easier or faster. Honestly, I bought your product because the people here all recommend it. I really have no idea what it's actually doing.

It's my understanding that a CF encoded file is actually larger in size than an AVI capture, so I find the concept confusing.

Thanks. BTW, I've never seen a company provide support and its exectutives be as candid as you are. That certainly influenced my purchase decision.

Our files are definitely bigger than highly-compressed long-GOP MPEG. One way to think about it is that with MPEG files there is no "headroom" remaining to "move" the image in post. Our larger files are compressed less, allowing much more headroom for a multi-generation post workflow. We prefer to compare ourselves against uncompressed files from a visual fidelity standpoint and the ability to manipulate the images.

Now, when you start from MPEG - i.e., convert to CineForm from a tape capture, we don't add fidelity upon conversion (you can't create something that wasn't there in the first place), but we prepare the image for your post workflow. We recreate 4:2:2 images (from MPEGs 4:2:0), we add headroom (our larger files), we eliminate the long-GOP nature of MPEG making editing much easier, our format is light on the CPU allowing many streams of playback and reduced rendering, and if you're a NEO HD or 2K customer we extend source precision from 8 bits to 10 (or 12) bits. This is also about increased post precision. Think of going from 8 bits to 10 bits as going from pi = 3.14 to 3.1416. The more manipulation you do of "pi" the more important the extra precision is.

Then of course we have myriad conversion features including telecine removal for 24p material allowing a 24p editing workflow, spatial resampling, etc. If you're dealing with material from multiple cameras this ability to convert all sources into a common compressed Digital Intermediate is very useful.

At the end of the day it's about improved visual fidelity of your finished product, more flexibility, and doing so with less rendering. Regarding visual fidelity, check out the many different quality analyses we've posted on our website: http://www.cineform.com/technology/quality.htm.

To me, the most important thing Neo adds to the Vegas workflow is one you didn't mention: smart-rendering. Vegas will smart-render Cineform codec clips. What that means is that in a Cineform based project, Vegas will render all the transitions, titles, etc, but all those long stretches of video where nothing has changed will be simply file copied into the final Cineform render. This is called smart-rendering and not only does it save a generation of quality for any part that is smart-rendered, but it also is WAY QUICKER! A smart-rendered project will render in maybe one twentieth of the time of a non-smart-rendered project. For me, this is probably the main reason I'm using Cineform. Just make sure you check that little "enable smart-renders in Vegas" tab in your HDlink preferences before you capture.

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